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To see or not to see Paranormal Activity. This question has plagued me for two weeks now. I hate horror films. They're all the same. The demographic is so dedicated to see them regardless of quality, there's never an attempt by a studio to make one that's remotely interesting. This decade, as the torture porn craze literally took over the genre, it's only gotten worse. It's not unlike how Star Wars altered people's perception of science fiction. It's a fantasy film! Go watch Sunshine, or Moon. That's sci-fi. To me, a horror film is a slasher film. You don't get any intriguing storyline with your gore. The Shining and The Excorsist are now psychological thrillers. Today, if you like horror movies, you see them all and if you don't, you see none of them. But that's not fair. I have enjoyed the genre in the past. I don't mind blood or being scared. I'll see anything if it's good. Why is it that this potentially interesting genre has been hijacked into only making crappy films?

So now we have the phenomenon - I think we can all agree it's attained that status – that is Paranormal Activity spreading like wildfire. After posting solid numbers with minuscule theater counts resulting in obscene venue averages over the first few weeks of release, it exploded onto the big stage with $20 million on only 600 screens. And if that wasn't enough, the following week – albeit casting a much wider net over nearly 2,000 theatres – the performance was duplicated in the face of Saw, the decade's definitive horror franchise that's also largely responsible for the turn the genre has taken. There are so many impressive things about this performance, it's hard to get your mind around it. The movies had the same demographic and Saw VI had a leg up because the two were squaring off over the torture porn flick's opening weekend. Paranormal Activity already had a stunning $33 million over five weeks in the bank.

Up until last weekend, I had successfully shut out PA's deafening buzz. It's not unlike trying to ignore a mosquito whining in your ear as you try to go to sleep. You do your best to ignore it, hoping to doze off before you're compelled to leap out of bed and furiously grab a fly swatter. Right now I'm at the point of contemplating turning on the lights, because this movie just won't go away.

To give you an idea of just how adverse I've become towards horror, it wasn't until two days ago that I realized I thought Paranormal Activity was actually a different movie. I kept hearing it had an $11,000 budget and thinking, "wow, Milla Jovovich sure did take a pay cut." But then when BOP was so good as to sell ad space to its marketers, I was promptly told flat out by the voiceover that immediately started when I visited the site that I totally thought Paranormal Activity was The Fourth Kind. I don't know. They both have crappy digital footage. You can see how I got confused. Right?

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